Star Date: Dec 23rd, 2008Frostval Part 2!Today we released the end of Frostval '08. you will get to avoid being stomped by a reign terror and face Shadow Claws himself!

Also, today we added a beautiful new Ice Mecha with new arm and shoulder weapons as well as nice collection of commemorative Starship items... like wall mounted Reign Terror Heads... and Frosty the Abominable Snow Mecha. We also have a new Frostscythe Unit, a mecha penguin with a bad attitude! Watch out for the Mechguin on the battlefield and in random encounters!

Remember, on Dec. 25th, the Holiday Star Captian Gift Boxes will be revealed! The weapon contained within is incredible and has a nice assortment of battle effects! You'll definitely want to grab one before the Holiday event is over.

This is our release for the week. The secret underground headquarters is closed for the rest of the week while we celebrate the holidays by... getting lots and lots of wonderful sleep! (Except for those of us with kids who shall never know the wonderful splendor of dreamland ever again...)

Anyway, I wish everyone a happy and safe holiday season!

Warlic

Star Date: Dec 19th, 2008Frostval!
It's here... this is our first ever Frostval event in MechQuest History! Many of you guessed the inspiration for Planet Thoh after we first announced the name of the planet. Hopefully, after you see this zone, you'll will see the reference as it comes right out and smacks you in the face! I even wrote a new audio clip for this one... I hope you like it!

tThis week was pretty intense, we built the entire zone from scratch and have all new Shadowscythe enemies called the Frostscythe that are attacking the town of Frostvale! There is a lot to do on Planet Thoh, we have 5 new quests and holiday gift boxes for Star Captains that will open up on Christmas like last year's Holiday Head weapon...

Next Week, we are on a holiday schedule so, we will not be here on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. So, that means that the end of Frostval will be released on Tuesday with new holiday mecha, rare tems and the epic showdown with Shadow Claws himself! We also have some more Frostscythe enemies in the pipeline, so get ready for a grand finale!

We actually have 2 special events happening at the same time! Don't forget to head over to GEARS Games and support your fellow housemates... or betray them.. your choice.

Warlic

Star Date: Dec 12th, 2008Arms and Shoulders
Today we worked out the kinks in our new House-Only Arms and Shouder weapons now available at the GEARS Games reward shops. These new weapons were designed with PvP on the mind with special abilities that give you advantages over opposing house mecha. These new weapons are very complex and each one has a variety of effects ranging from House Advantage buffs that last through the battle if the weapon detects that you are facing an enemy house to special purge effects that wipe out Smokescreen and Berserk effects and knock rounds off of mana shields!

These items are really incredible and bring a whole new level of strategy to house versus house fighting! They are definitely worth checking out and they are very effective in a variety of situations... and to think, just last year, no weapons had specials other than Fire... ;-)

Also today, we fixed a problem with the game that was preventing the new Heads from detecting their opposing houses and we also started re-balancing some of our older mechs that don't divide damages properly... you know, those Newbatrons that wipe you out in 2 hits? Well, not anymore! We also started sweeping through some of the older weapons that had the same problems.

Anyway, we have a busy week ahead of us. Planet Thoh is coming on Friday! The dreaded Shadow Claws is coming to reign terror on town!

Warlic

Star Date: Dec 12th, 2008Whew! The games are happening right now... I honestly don't know how I survived this week... many ups and downs... a few all nighters and a couple waking dreams added to the mix... This is our first massively single player PvP war, so it's like the Wild West out there... Anything can happen! The PvP fights are scaled using our in-game scaling system. So, there may be a few odd scalings here and there. We may very likely need to tweak some balancing code here and there over time to get it perfect. We have also opened the Games to Non-house members. Non-affiliated players will be acting as Free agents - their kllls are randomly assigned to one of the three houses. Everyone is welcome to play the games!

Anyway, Things seem to be running smoothly overall considering the huge amount of updates that we had to make behind the scenes to get things working for betrayal and pvp. Every single house mecha and item needed to be updated and the game engine was modified twice! So, make sure you are running Omega Version 2.0.0. If not, then please refresh your browser page. Also, during testing we noticed some longer loading times on the PvP battles. This is due to the fact that when you load a player's mecha, you have to load the entire mecha as well as items that are equipped. So if the game seems to spin on "Loading Enemy", don't give it up for dead. It will eventually load the enemy. After a while, your loading times will become much faster as your browser and ISP cache the files.

We Added some new Star Captain Only Heads that act as perfect updates to the Advance House Mecha heads. These will open up when your house reaches the 10% mark. We also have a bunch of new Arms and Nova Gem Shoulders coming very soon too. All rewards for the GEARS Games are for House Members Only. So, you really should join a house to get the most out of the games.

House Betrayal is finally a part of the game. This has been a long time coming and has been requested since the first day we released Houses... Seems so long ago, but it was just February!!I wanted to make this like a true betrayal...So, it seemed right to incorporate it into the games. Remember, for every Betrayal Badge you pick up, you had to defeat one of your fellow house members and contribute to your house's possible loss in the games. For betrayal, I thought that it was fitting to have you go back into the Labyrinths once again. Only this time it is going to be an epic adventure through all of the color Zones!

On a side note, during testing I noticed a lot of you were using Geekatrons without any saved weapon configs! If you want your mech to perform a little better in PvP, then you should really equip it with some weapons :P I have had a great time checking out eveyone's mecha configs. They range from the purely awesome to utterly ridiculous! I even fought a mecha that was fully customized to look like a pumpkin! there were even a few that scared me a little...It's nice to see that with so many weapons and mecha models to choose from, there is a growing variety of possible combinations... and the Golden Anniversary mecha models were REALLY popular :P

Anyway, I hope that you have fun with the games! The last one was a blast! And it just happened to be one of our most explosive forum events! Remember... It's just a game!

Warlic

Star Date: Dec 11th, 2008Regarding Betrayal!Since announcing that House Betrayal is coming, tons of questions have been popping up all over the place! Here are answers to a few of the more frequent ones...

Q: If I betray my house, Will I be able to keep my items?A: Yes! You are allow to keep your House items. However, you will not be able to use them in battle. They will not appear in your attack menu if you do not belong to the corresponding house.

Q: do I have to give up my awesome house mecha in order to betray?A: No. House betrayal will not require you to give up your House Mecha. You will be able to keep it as well... However, if you equip it, then it will be "crippled" with 10hp and 1ep. So unless you belong to the proper house, it will be completely useless except as a collector's piece.

Q: Do I have to betray my house to do the full labyrinth Quest?A: No, the labyrinth will be available to Star Captains as a bonus zone in the Games. If you not betraying your house, then you will fight against betrayers in the labyrinth.

I hope these answers help! If anymore major questions pop up, I will try to answer them before Friday...

Warlic

Star Date: Dec 9th, 2008GEARS Games Coming Friday!Note: For the remainder of December, we are doing away with our traditional "minor" Wednesday releases to dedicate more time to our Holiday releases and the next GEARS Games.

This week I have been deeply entrenched in the Betrayal quest for GEARS Games. I feel that it is only fitting that betrayal is brings you back into the labyrinth, but this time you are going to have to go through the ENTIRE labyrinth fighting your fellow house members and finally, your house leader.

So, let's talk about Betrayal a bit. Betrayal is not something to be taken lightly. No, it's, quite frankly, betrayal.... If you decide to go the betrayal route, you will have to fight against your own house members, collecting "Betrayal Tokens." After you collect a nice LARGE number of these tokens, then the other House members will talk to you about Betraying your house and joining theirs. That is when you will receive temporary "green" clearance to the labyrinth where you will perform the final betrayal in which you will get banished from your current house forever. Star Captain will be able to go directly to labyrinth without collecting Betrayal Tokens. After you betray your house, you will be left Houseless... and may join one of the other houses. you will be rejected if you return to any house that you betray.

Note, you cannot get banished from all houses. If you have already betrayed 2 houses, you will not be allowed to betray the last house.

This time around the GEARS Games are going to be done in a "massively single player multiplayer" kind of way. Your opponents in this GEARS Games Event will be other players' mecha. The fights will be scaled using the standard scaling system. This is the next step in our pvp system.

To get on the PvP "opponent list", you will have to get your name approved. If you have a vulgar or overly offensive or hateful character name, you will be rejected from the list. You must be a Star Captain to submit your name on the list. Due to the vast amount of names on the list, we were behind on our approvals for a while, but we have caught up and now it is back to a managable level! If you want to find out how to get on the list, follow these instructions from Mae!

//------From Maegwyn:

Sorry if you've had a long waiting period! We've gotten caught up now, but there is the chance that an oversight could have occurred with the enormous thread of over 1100 individual posts - so please forgive us, and do the following:

# Log in to MQ with your character

# Go to the University and talk to Denara - you will see a big button that says "Stadium!" (Click it, and she will send you to Nigel in the Stadium.)

# When you are at the Stadium with Nigel, click "Check Status"

# If by some chance a popup says "You have not applied yet!" then please click the big button that says, "Sign Me Up!" (PvP approval also gives you approval for Starship Visits.)

Maegwyn: Hi Warlic! I'm on name approvals til my arms go numb!

Warlic: Yeah, I approved about 60k last night. For some reason my spine is tingling...

Warlic: Uh oh! Ummmm Mae, somebody threw water on Gizmo while we were clicking names....

Maegwyn: /me brandishes epic Gremlin whacking hammer of bluntness!

Warlic

Star Date: Dec 5th, 2008Arachnids!Today we continued focussing on Planet Zargon with a new quest, Arachnid Phobia! This new quest takes place after the Rescue the Heroes quest in which you liberated Dr. Bryce Benner from Boltavolt's control.

I must say, I really love how Zargon is coming together. The new walkaround map really added a lot to the zone. Today's Arachnid Phobia quest does something else that we have never done before in MQ... enemies in the dungeon will actually chase you and the boss at the end has a rare chance to drop an awesome Star Captain head weapon called the web walker... Also, as promised a ton of information will be revealed about the Universo project. Mainly that it is very very big and about as powerful as it is big... It's.. Inconceivable!

Stomping Spiders... Ewwwww!

Well, for the rest of this month, we will be taking a bit of a break from Zargon and focusing our attention on the Ice Planet, Thoh. This holiday season the Shadowscythe are going to spread their holiday cheer with their new army of Reign Terrors... led by none other than Shadow Claws himself!

Next week... GEARS GAMES!

Warlic

Star Date: Dec 3rd, 2008Zargon Walkaround!The first phase of implementing walkaround in Zargon is complete. Today we released a walk and fly around map in Mechtropolis. The town is a little lonely right now, because the only person to talk to is Selina, but I will be adding some non-essential npcs to liven up the town in furture release. the map will also expand as we develop Zargon more fully.

There are a couple of things that make me pretty excited about this walkaround map. We added a couple of things that haven't been done in the game yet. First of all, and this is the most exciting... We have Fly around capability in Mechtropolis! (When I showed this to Cysero, he immediately put added it to Rolith's to do list for Dragonfable... XD) If you possess a supersuit, you will be able to fly around the city and access things that you cannot access on foot or in your mecha. Right now, Mechtropolis is kinda like a little playground. You can walk around and stumble upon random missions and the bonus missions. Also, Zargon is the first walkaround map to feature on-the-fly mecha/foot switching. You can hop into your mechs at anytime and stomp around the city... There will be some areas that are too dangerous to go on foot in the future. There are a lot of cool possibilities opening up for exploration now...

This Friday we will be releasing a new quest on Planet Zargon featuring the Arachnid. I promise to reveal a greater insight to Boltavolt's mysterious Universo Project. Let's just say, it's BIG... The end that we have planned for Zargon is completely insane...

Continuing in my new found skill of total confusion... I noticed today that there was some more confusion yesterday in regard to the release of the next GEARS Games. That wil be NEXT Friday... NOT THIS Friday. This time, however, I do not apologize for the confusion as I said, "next" Friday in the previous post... :P

Warlic

Star Date: Dec 2nd, 2008An Apology is Due!First of all, I would like to apologize for a terrible oversight on my part regarding the Design Notes. As you know last week's release was the conclusion of the Dragonoid war and our thanksgiving items. All of those releases were finished and published on Wednesday evening. It was actually a double release day. I had intended for the end of the war to be reached by Friday so that the ending cutscene and war rewards would open for the weekend. Well, this last war was the most successful war we have had in months and you reached the ending on Wednesday night! Therefore both releases occurred on the same day instead of Wednesday (minor release) and Friday (major release). As I was catching up on reading the forums, I noticed that many of you were confused on Friday, when nothing was released. I am deeply sorry for any confusion this caused. This confusion would have been greatly reduced if I had simply done as Cysero did and put a single sentence in my DNs stating that because of the holiday both releases are occurring on Wednesday because everyone was off on Friday. I apologize for not communicating this better.

I have read some disappointed posts regarding the lack of walkaround exploration in Mechtropolis on Planet Zargon. It is a fact that we had originally intended Zargon to be designed similarly to a "zone" such as Mecharoni or Mysterious Johnson - in other words - without walkaround exploration. However, it is apparent that this greatly reduces the gameplay experience of exploring new planets. So, tomorrow's Wedensday release is going to be walkaround in Mechtropolis. The walkaround for Mechtropolis will allow you to access the current array of quests that are already released in Selina's Headquarters. this walkaround zone will continue to exapnd as Zargon expands... and yes... there will be flying involved...

Next Friday's release will be the next. GEARS GAMES! There will be Betrayal in the new games - but just remember... Betrayal will negatively affect your house's performance in the games. So if you betray your house and it loses... you will have contributed to the failure of your house!